Keeping His Mind
by SCWLC
Summary: Omegas are kept on suppressants at all times. John has his own formula because the side effects destroy the mind. No one knows because no one cares to find out. Omegaverse and alternate universe, obviously. My first foray into a new fandom, as usual without a beta or a britpicker. Also, there is the sex between John and Sherlock, because that's what these are for.
1. John Taken

Title: Keeping His Mind

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Summary: Omegas are kept on suppressants at all times. John has his own formula because the side effects destroy the mind. No one knows because no one cares to find out.

Rating: M possibly even that M+ rating.

Notes: So, this sprang from reading a bunch of A/B/O fics over on AO3. Specifically from reading The Gilded Cage by BeautifulFiction. Admittedly, my exploration of things to do with what I think would turn Sherlock on don't require the omegaverse, and the idea I had about the stupid-making pills also doesn't need it per se, the omegaverse is an excellent place to create a justification for someone feeding a person those pills. Anyhow, aspects of this fic were inspired by that one, but I certainly don't claim it's as good a piece of writing. Also, it's distinctly lacking in both the length and detail required to make it really good, but I wanted this off my chest. So, here lies my first foray into the Sherlock fandom.

Notes2: This is unbetaed and unbritpicked, so any and all errors are due to my complete failure to put in the proper effort.

* * *

John was still amazed Sherlock had never deduced the truth. Then again, that catch-phrase, _When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truth,_ had one failing. If one of the things that you believed to be impossible wasn't impossible, then no matter what you deduced it had a risk of being wrong.

Everyone knew that omegas were stupid. Well, alright, these days it might be more politically correct to declare them intellectually disabled or mentally challenged or something, but it was generally agreed-upon that they didn't have enough brains to fill a teaspoon. They only got smarter when they were pregnant. The idea of an omega able to function in the outside world, let alone one able to become a doctor and serve in the army? That was like proposing that Mycroft Holmes was all cuddles and kittens. Interesting conceptually, but just fundamentally impossible.

The thing was, John wasn't some kind of unexpected mutation, he wasn't a sport or a freak of nature. He was just really, really lucky. Lucky that omegas were taken off of the brain-damaging chemical suppressants that kept their pheromones under control for the duration of pregnancies, lucky that, like his alpha sister, he hadn't been given his mum's breast milk because she hadn't started lactating for some reason, lucky that he'd become ill so young so that he was on the hospital suppressants which were nausea-inducing but didn't react with other medications and also didn't cause brain damage. Lucky because he and Harry figured it out on their own and managed by hard work and luck and reckless self-testing to make a better, non-damaging formula.

Well, he thought he was lucky on the days when he didn't remember that the alpha he . . . his best friend had pitched himself off the roof of a teaching hospital.

Instead he had lost himself in working around and behind Mycroft Holmes who also seemed to have no idea. John had learnt from Sherlock where many of the more hidden CCTV cameras were and how to spot others and worked around them to meet up with the parts of Sherlock's Homeless Network that had become his.

There were always a few omegas who slipped through the net, ones whose parents didn't want to hand them over to either state or private care centres to be given away to some alpha with the appropriate pedigree or amount of money. Omegas who got lucky in the ways John had who tried to vanish, who then turned up on the streets. Sherlock's network had let John contact them and provide them with his safe, non-nausea-inducing, non-brain-damaging, pheromone and heat suppressant. It was actually easy enough to manufacture once you knew how, and it took very little effort to get a few of the people who used to sell things like meth, ones having crises of conscience, to switch over to producing the suppressants.

The sales were almost aboveboard.

The more complicated part of things had been helping omegas escape to lead lives pretending to be betas. Help them escape from families who were patronising, if loving, smothering, if well-intentioned, and had no idea they were destroying the minds of their children but could never be convinced otherwise, escape from abusive families that just wanted the cash from their useless omega offspring, escape from institutions filled with well-meaning and patronisingly well-trained medical staff who thought omegas were like cute puppies.

They took advantage of that last one a lot, because it was really easy to escape from a place if you had all your mental faculties and they thought you were dumber than a bag of rocks.

But society at large had no idea. They never saw omegas for the most part, because you only got omegas when omegas were one of the parents and it was only a small collection of elite families (whether currently rich or at-one-time rich) who had omegas in the family to start with. Only the wealthy could afford to pay the government fees required to bring an omega into the home. Meanwhile, almost no one ever seemed to note that people didn't do proper scientific studies of them, hadn't since the Nazis, to whom John owed an unfortunate historical debt. While everything they'd done had been horrifying, they had left comprehensive documentation of experiments that John had used in his work (it being almost hilarious how he'd been able to wander into those archives under the auspices of a poor lost omega too stupid to be a security concern).

So John had, in the end, done his best, fled with Harry, both of them taking on fake names and then splitting up just in case someone went looking for the fraternal twins (obvious that Hamish Waters _had_ to be with his sister because he was an omega and therefore couldn't be out on his own), but not much more than that. She was too worried about him being caught and he was too worried about her being arrested for kidnapping of the not mentally competent.

Technically he was supposed to be under the state's guardianship, his father having sent him off in exchange for a government stipend, since as an omega he was supposedly not competent to handle his own affairs, which meant that Harry getting him out would inevitably be seen as kidnapping.

He was brought out of his thoughts as he spotted a familiar face. It was a young girl, one who he'd managed to get out of a facility the week before. It was an advantage being a doctor, because it meant he could waltz into some of those places and fake the authority. Something else he'd learnt from Sherlock.

John swallowed sharply as he quashed the memory of a body falling through the air.

Refocusing he saw her fear and saw, several feet behind her, a five-person team. Two nurses, someone who had the look of an orderly, someone else from social services and what looked like a police officer. They weren't subtle, and if they kept on they'd find the safehouse that she was heading to. He had to step in, and got in between them and the girl. "Oi! You lot! What're you doing?"

"Nothing sir," said one nurse, trying to get past him. John stepped in her way, then weaved a little to the right, effectively blocking them, taking up their attention, just planning to hold it long enough for Alice to get around the corner and down the alley.

Memories of being trapped in one of those hellhole institutions grabbed him, and John had to struggle to stay calm. "You look like you're stalking that kid with a net," he told them. "She done something wrong?"

"Look, sir," said the orderly, "She's an omega and if we don't get her back she'll probably hurt herself running into traffic."

 _Like a stupid puppy,_ John thought with a brief clenching of his jaw.

And then it fell apart. Because he suddenly realised why he'd known the fourth one was a social worker, and she realised it at the same time. "Hamish Waters!" she exclaimed. "Oh my!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," John bluffed, suddenly terrified. Now? This was happening now?

And she dropped into the baby talk they all used with omegas because they thought it was soothing. "It's okay. I don't know how you've got on but we'll help you."

John took two steps back, disoriented at this sudden change and brought a hand up to push them away when he was hit with a taser. _They were using tasers now?_ He thought to himself as he felt himself seize up and twitch. Then one of them hit him with a sedative of some kind and he passed out.


	2. Sherlock Surprised

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: So, the timeline in this is a little back and forth. That is, some of these chapters are happening at the same time as others, and the only definitive timeline point I can offer you all is that this is after Reichenbach. I'm terrible at casefics in any fandom, so the case parts of this are handwaved with vigour. Also still unbetaed and unbritpicked.

* * *

"Sherlock."

He lay on the couch, fingers steepled under his chin as he plumbed the depths of his Mind Palace. There had to be a clue there. He'd only delayed starting his search for John until his brother had made him legally alive again, and then he'd visited John's little flat, visited the clinic, the pubs John had frequented and the Tesco's down the street.

"Unless you're going to tell me that you have some CCTV footage or any other valid evidence of John's whereabouts, I wish you to leave, Mycroft," Sherlock declared. His mind rattled over the evidence in the tiny flat that had showed no suicidal inclinations on John's part, had turned up the usual vitamin pills that John took every day and nothing that showed either intention or kidnapping.

A soft sigh with that tooth-grinding patronising attitude that so rankled. "Sherlock, he was very . . . upset at your death-"

"There is no evidence of suicide, none of suicidal ideation, no indications of preparations in advance of death," Sherlock sat up to glare at his brother. "You are implying John is somehow weak-minded enough that he had based his entire life on me to the point that my death left him with nothing at all."

Mycroft sighed again and Sherlock had to resist the urge to throw things at him. Had it never occurred to Mycroft that the reason no one liked or trusted him was because he couched everything in these patently false tones of magnanimity or pity? "John held up sentiment as a virtue. He was prone to excess in that way."

"No more so than anyone else," Sherlock snapped. "He had nothing but scathing words to say about people who let themselves become nothing more than an appendage. He was particularly determined that such a thing not happen in relation to me. He wouldn't let my, 'Alpha need for unadulterated and constant attention' stop him from being his own person."

They were both cut off by the arrival of another alpha. She strode into the room, glaring at them both impartially, trailed after by Mrs. Hudson. "Now dear," said the beta, "He's not-"

"John's my brother and I want to talk to the man who half-killed my brother by faking his death," the blonde woman said. She looked them up and down and her eyes widened briefly at the sight of Mycroft before she seemed to bristle. "You must by Mycroft. John said a lot about you," her voice was filled with disgust.

"Oh?" said Mycroft, suppressing a smile.

Suddenly the woman turned into a shrieking dervish of drunken caterwauling. Mycroft fled, abandoning Sherlock to the harridan who kept at her shrieking and nigh-incomprehensible ravings for another three minutes after Mycroft left before inhaling for breath through her nose.

She stopped. "Is he really gone?" she asked.

The sudden shift made Sherlock's eyes narrow. She'd been dissembling. Harry Watson had a reputation. A drunken one, one that John had frequently handled over the mobile she'd given her brother.

"A masterful performance," Sherlock said. "I assume you wanted my brother gone for a reason?"

Harriet Watson's smile had teeth. "He said that if I could find any way to avoid doing anything Mycroft asked, I should, because whatever he was doing would have five reasons, one I would agree with, two I wouldn't object to in particular and two I would find offensive if I only knew what they were."

Sherlock felt himself smile for the first time in years. John was missing and he was still surprising his friend. The detective hadn't ever expected John's sister to be this incisive, hadn't expected John to have gone to the trouble of warning his sister to this degree about Mycroft. "True enough," he said. "But you're here to ask me to find him."

"No," she said. "I'm here to look you over and find out if you're what he thought you were."

That was . . . unexpected. "I can assure you that I am the best-"

"I don't doubt that," she said. "But I'm more concerned about the fact that Johnny said you were the least prejudiced person he knew. The most rational one. Someone who'd always look at all the evidence and not make it fit some preconceived idea but the actual facts."

He stared. This was fascinating, and if it hadn't so clearly had something to do with John he would have been amused. As it was, "You know something about John's disappearance. The mere fact of your appearance and the way in which you drove Mycroft off suggests a concern that my brother may be involved. More," he said as she shifted uncomfortably, "You are carrying some sort of information with you, something that you believe to be pertinent. At the same time, you do not feel you can trust me with it . . ." the shift in her scent, the way she moved and unconsciously kept her hands studiously from getting near her right jeans pocket told him. "It's a thumb drive in your right jeans pocket."

"There are a lot of people I don't trust with this," she said. "And I need to know I can trust you before I say anything about it." Her head snapped up and she glared, drawing herself up to look him in the eye, every inch of her an alpha challenge. If he didn't know better, he would have thought it was over ownership of an omega. There was something very territorial in her gaze. "So tell me. Why did you do it? Not the palaver that's on the telly, why did you make my brother watch you kill yourself, then swan back three years later as though nothing had happened?"

He fixed his eyes on her, thinking quickly. He needed to know what had happened to John, and if John's sister had useful information, and clearly she thought it was important, he needed that. She was worried about her brother, but not merely about his being missing. She knew something. It bled in through the way she was now resting a hand over her pocket, guarding it lest he pickpocket her, but was simultaneously watching him with what looked like hope.

"I met Moriarty on the roof," he told her. "I knew that he had been planning something, I knew that he'd want me to take myself out of the game. There were a lot of factors, the word I'd got on the orders given to his people told me I needed to be ready to fake my death." He closed his eyes as he remembered the moment he'd seen John arrive, had found himself on his mobile with his friend. "He wasn't supposed to be there," he told Harry. "He wasn't supposed to watch, but once he did I needed him looking away from the trick." He could still recall the scream of his friend, could still sometimes hear John struggling to reach him, could sometimes smell the acrid smell of grief and pain that had reached him despite his homeless friends' efforts to keep John from getting too close.

"What else?" Harry asked him. She was calm and steady and Sherlock could see John in that steadiness.

"There were three snipers. One on Lestrade, one on Mrs. Hudson-"

"And one on John," she finished. Her face softened. "You jumped to protect him. But why didn't you tell him after?"

This was the part that he'd been certain of until he came back to find John missing, possibly dead. The moments when he'd considered (however briefly) that John might have killed himself made him doubt the wisdom of what he'd done, because if the pain he'd felt from brief and unconfirmed imagining was awful, how must have John felt, knowing? "John's not a very good liar," Sherlock told her. Something in her face looked derisive a moment, but it smoothed away. He made a mental note to investigate later. "He needed to be there, grieving, publicly. That way Moriarty's people would know I was dead and I could deal with them. That's where I've been," he explained. "I had to find them and make sure John was safe."

She looked at him steadily a moment, then sat down in John's chair. "This may seem like a non sequitur," she told him, "But what do you know about omegas?"

"Very little," he openly admitted choosing to allow her the oblique approach. Unlike Mycroft, he didn't think this would be intended as a misdirection. He would have collected his violin to play the worst sort of modern atonal pieces if Mycroft had begun this way. "I do not bother with information I will not need."

Appraisingly, she said, "John said you . . . you 'delete' things you think aren't important. So, how much is left beyond the simple fact that omegas exist?"

"They're notorious for being unintelligent, frequently used as a shorthand descriptor of opprobrium for those who wish to call someone stupid," he said. "Prone to going into so-called heats at regular intervals and with a scent that acts as a powerful attractant to alphas, sending them into a so-called 'rut'," he said.

She looked steadily at him, and then said, "If an omega is unbonded then the heats happen monthly. The attractant scent builds and fades every month, peaking during the heat, but it's a constant. Family is immune, thankfully," she said. _There was an omega in the Watson family?_ She was unaware of his thoughts and the sinking feeling in his chest. "With a suppressant they're only every six months or a year. The scent reduces down and only becomes an issue during the actual period of the heat. There's some variability depending on what you're using." She pulled out the thumb drive. "The details are on there. The thing is, suppressants have been used for millennia. Once people started to use omegas as bargaining chips in things like negotiations for land it only made sense to find a way to keep them from getting into trouble with someone who wasn't the person you were negotiating with."

It was blindingly obvious. "The suppressants are the cause of the so-called omega stupidity," he said, sitting bolt upright as his mind parsed through the things she'd said.

She smiled wryly. "You're as good as John said you were," Harry told him admiringly. "But no one ever looked. They just put the kids on suppressants the moment they're off of breastfeeding. And even then-"

"The parent omega is on suppressants the moment he or she gives birth," Sherlock said, eyes widening. "The effect of the suppressants is passed to the child. That's the reason why betas and alphas aren't breastfed from the omega parent."

John's sister nodded, her lips pressed together for a moment before she said, "I'm not going to tell you all the nitty details, the chemical stuff, that's what's on that drive. That's John's work and you can read it all yourself. No, what I need you to do is find out where the OPS has taken John and get him out before they turn his brain into mush."

There were several beats of silence as Sherlock processed this. John was an omega. He'd thought John was simply involved in some group to help omegas escape. He could approve of something that rescued people whose minds were being stifled, because the thought made him sick. People were idiots, but to take a mind that had potential and crush it, that went against everything in him.

John was an omega. Someone had tried to do that to John.

"How do you know they have him?" he asked, quashing all his feelings.

"We have a small network of people. John said he piggybacked on your Homeless Network to get started, because it stays under your brother's radar for the most part and it would be easy to pretend that he was doing a favour for you if he got seen."

He gestured at her to speed up. "Yes, yes, I assumed you had formed a sort of underground escape route."

She glared. "One of our recent escapees was being followed and John stepped in to cover for her. One of them somehow recognised him. They took him. She got away, told everyone that he'd been taken, but we don't know where."

"Take me to her," Sherlock said. "I need to know everything."

On the one hand, it was a relief to know that John was alive, to know that he could be found, but half-remembered stories of omega stupidity made his heart pound uncomfortably, along with just the thought of John taken prisoner by anyone.


	3. Institutionalisation

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: So, some of these chapters are going to be way shorter than others, this is a short one. Also, I'm trying to use Sherlock for my exposition, because he's the one who actually doesn't know stuff this once, and if it makes John's experiences artifically mysterious, well, so be it. Also, there is some smutly stuff coming in the next update.

* * *

When John woke he was in a cell-like hospital room. Everything was padded and there were crayons, paper and fuzzy toys on the ground. A fatuously smiling nurse was sitting next to the bed, and two smug orderlies were standing beside her.

"Any chance of a cup of tea before you start in on me?" he asked.

She smiled brightly and spoke in careful and loud tones and very slowly. "Oh! You are clever!"

"Because I asked for tea?" he inquired dryly.

"My name is Annie," she said, ignoring anything that didn't suit her. "And I'll be your friend. Now, friends try to take good care of each other-"

"Don't suppose I could get in a phone call to one of mine on the outside?" he asked.

She talked over him. "I'm supposed to take care of you, which is why I need you to take your medicine." She thrust the sickly green pills at him.

John stared at her a moment, feeling his heart sink in his chest. This was it. For a moment he thought about fighting his way out, but the door was heavy steel. Designed to keep an angry, scared omega in the room. There would be more on the way out, and if he fought they weren't above tasing him again. For his own, stupid, protection.

There had to be a way out.

"So," he played for time. "I'm sort of old for childrearing, you're not planning to sell me out for that, are you?"

Her face made a weird little pseudo-sympathetic pout. "No, we'd be too worried about you having babies now. I know you'd like to be a nice mummy, but sometimes you can't have things you want. You'll make lots of new friends with omegas that have problems that would keep them from being good mummies."

A plan began to take shape. "What sort of problems?" _Just answer the questions_. Those damned pills were fast-acting and he needed to have his plan set in his head, because a few days of doses and he'd never work it out.

To keep her talking a little longer, John took the pills from her hands and began rolling them around his fingers, dexterously playing with them, delaying as long as he could. "Oh, lots of things. Lots of them are sick and need extra help from my friends. You'd have to be extra nice to them."

Sometimes he wondered how much denial they were in when they ran into an omega like him, one that talked like a regular person and who took offence at being treated like a half-wit. "So they have to take lots of extra pills?" he asked.

"Yes," she said all wide-eyed ingenuous sincerity.

He eyed her a moment, then asked one last question. "If I take your pills," he said, "Do I get out of this room?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed, smiling. "We're your friends!"

Crayon, paper clenched tightly in a fist, he wouldn't have much time to take notes and he prayed they kept to schedules as much as they did the time that Harry rescued him. He wouldn't have long before the pills ate away at how well he could think or plan and he needed it done and written down before then.

Then he took a deep breath and swallowed them down. He fancied he could feel his thoughts slowing as the pills hit his tongue.

'Annie' let him into the common area.


	4. Losing His Mind

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: So, I have a theory about Sherlock's sexuality and interest in partners. He thinks of the body as mere transport, so there's no way he'll have more than a passing aesthetic appreciation for someone's primary or secondary sexual characteristics, or indeed any other physical characteristics. So, assuming he's not purely asexual (always a possibility), look at the only people who come close to making him look turned on. Irene Adler and Moriarty. Why? Because they stimulate his _mind_. They're clever, like him, so they turn him on. So, in order to get him interested in John Watson, you have to make John smart enough that Sherlock would find his brain sexy. And that's where the wanking in this scene comes from. Sherlock isn't attracted to a physical appearance, he's attracted to the mind. So, I tried to give John a mind that Sherlock would find sexy.

* * *

Sherlock had always known John was smart. He had to be, because Sherlock wouldn't put up with any less sharing a flat with him. But the documents Harry had scanned into the thumb drive were more than smart. They were _genius._ Even the earliest ones, the ones done by a fourteen-year-old John, were brilliant.

He'd taken the hormone regulation pills beta women used when they had difficulties with their reproductive cycles and compared the hormones and chemicals to those of omegas' cycles. An omega's oestrus was just like an expanded and overwrought variant on the beta cycle. He'd compared the hormonal changes in relation to alphas, who could also be given suppressants to reduce the natural response to omega pheromones.

They were all human, all the same species, the fundamentals were the same, and John had worked backwards from the careful and serious studies done on the other secondary sexes, extrapolating how they _ought_ to apply to omegas.

Reading the experiments John had done on himself Sherlock had disregarded the risks John had taken in favour of considering this mind that had developed such a narrow but biochemically brilliant focus.

He was so used to ignoring his transport that it took Sherlock by surprise when his hand slipped of its own accord and pressed down hard on his lap. The flash of physical pleasure brought him out of his reading of a beautifully absorbing doctoral dissertation-quality commentary on chemical composition of birth control pills for betas.

It had been a very long time since he'd felt that. Sherlock wasn't interested in men, he wasn't interested in women or alphas, betas or omegas. He'd never understood men or women who became aroused at the sight of primary sexual biological characteristics, at the sight of legs or tans or muscles. He still didn't understand, because he was interested in the person, in the _mind_. The mind that had written these formulae, that had constructed a pheromonal controller and oestrus suppressant pill out of deconstructed birth control and alpha suppressants was a breathtaking mind and Sherlock was suddenly and violently aroused.

His eyes were fixed on the laptop screen as he frantically undid his trousers, his erection pressed against the zip and nearly springing into his hand as the zip came down. The reasoning on the screen faded in and out of view as he wrapped one hand around the swollen and aching member, groaning as he squeezed, imagining John in the room with him, John telling him all about the calculations in these files, telling him about performing the experiments, John there with him, pressed against him and muttering filthy words of encouragement in his ear, John in oestrus, all slick and tight and wrapped around Sherlock as they were knotted together, while John told him all about the hormonal changes in an omega in oestrus.

The mind that could write all these ideas, all this chemistry and biology and to do it while working around a society that wouldn't let him experiment to find out, that was actively trying to crush that same mind, this was a mind that went so far as to affect Sherlock's transport itself.

Flashes of John running, of moments when they'd touched each other while avoiding death at the hands of some criminal or other, John's hands on Sherlock as he put stitches into a knife wound, memories and fantasies combined with the attraction racing through Sherlock and his hand tugged harder on his erection, faster, the liquid oozing from the tip slicking the way just a little, his fingers lightly brushing over the tissue that would form a knot during intercourse with an omega, because it was just that bit more sensitive, and he couldn't help but keep imagining John.

With a moan he came, his body tense as the orgasm punched through him like a bullet shattering glass.

A lassitude settled over him, a sense of relaxation and wellbeing, and Sherlock leant back, panting and feeling his cock twitch a little in the aftermath. It felt rather brilliant, actually, and he suddenly recalled how pleasant it had been back when he was fourteen and just discovering masturbation. He'd had fantasies about Einstein and Marie Curie, sometimes Yo-Yo Ma or Artemisia Gentileschi. What had been important was a mind that was that cut above, and before he'd become disillusioned about the general quality of human intellect.

But now there was John Watson, and Sherlock smiled as he realised he still had many pages of increasingly complex biochemistry to read through.

Much later he realised he should have maybe been more careful, because laptops take poorly to liquid on the keyboard.

The next day caused the low-simmering arousal to vanish entirely.

Harry had taken him to meet the young omega witness. She wasn't a genius, wasn't even particularly smart, but she was able to describe the people she'd seen, tell him more or less what had been said as she'd hidden just around the corner from them and a few of the numbers from the car John had been bundled into when he was taken. She was, in Sherlock's opinion, really quite average. By comparison with the stories popularly spread around about omegas she was a genius.

But there was a whole room of omegas, and most of them were idiots, but they were idiots like the rest of humanity were idiots. Average, like Anderson or Donovan, unobservant but capable of inanities about the weather and the television. Still, they were ordinary people and very grateful to John and his sister for allowing them even that.

A few betas helped out, a few alphas, mostly ones who, like Harry, had a sibling turn out to be normal or even smart before the traditional suppressants were applied.

He was amused to learn that there was an omega hidden in Mycroft's people, who stayed there as much for the challenge of the job as for the chance to watch The British Government do his work. That one was most likely genuinely clever because Mycroft didn't hire idiots.

And the thought that there was something being done that stripped away their _minds,_ it made him feel sick. The one thing he'd heard from all of them as he'd asked questions to broaden his understanding of what John was and where he might have been taken, was this terrifying and sickening experience of losing one's intellect.

The worst of it was that some of them, the older ones, were damaged. Because the older an omega was, the longer they'd been on those traditional suppressants. Too long and the damage was permanent and there was no recovery of even the ability to watch and follow episodes of _Keeping up Appearances._ There was a man in his forties who needed his fingers to count to ten and who, from fragmented conversation, might once have been a skilled writer. Phrases would seem to crawl to the surface of George's mind, things that resided there in the stagnant pool the drugs had created, and they would make Sherlock swallow down nausea. There was an elderly woman who just sat and stared, and couldn't follow anything, but when paper and pen was laid in front of her would write out a complex mathematical proof. "John thinks she decided the rest could go hang," Harry told him when he asked. "If she couldn't remember anything else, couldn't do or be anything else, she'd have her Work." She'd etched that memory in deeply so that it would survive even when the names of simple objects didn't. Sherlock could understand that, tracing his fingers over the elegance of the numbers in the proof.

Everything he heard from them made him tremble, because it was a nightmare. His mind was everything to him, absolutely everything. The body, its height and slenderness, the appearance so many thought attractive were nothing, just transport. But now he was hearing words would haunt his dreams. _That day I couldn't remember how to tell the difference between an orderly and a nurse._ Removing even the ability to deduce. _I picked up my favourite book and the words didn't make sense, I couldn't understand them anymore._ Removing the ability to retain things learnt. _Every day there was one more thing I couldn't understand and it made everything so . . . small._ Being forced to understand that every day there was less there that you could understand.

They were doing that to John right now.

He collected and collated clues, searched out the locations of government omega care centres and narrowed his search down until he found the right one. He had planned to walk in the door, spend whatever money he needed to and walk out with his friend. Oh, there were proper channels of course, but it all boiled down to a marketplace to purchase a talking pet.

He strode past the halls of people, omegas who hadn't been lucky and had no idea the intellects they could have had, because the important thing was John. Once he had John out he would go to Mycroft and they would stop this because John was supposed to be safe and would only be safe when there weren't people waiting to kidnap him and take his mind away. He refused to believe that Mycroft had known about this. If he'd known about this travesty Sherlock was never trusting his brother again.

And then he was at the hideous cell they were keeping John in. A small padded room, because omegas couldn't be trusted not to hurt themselves, with asinine childish posters of cute animals on the walls and stuffed plushy toys and a disgustingly pink poofy bed. He took that in but no details because in front of him was, "John." His whole focus narrowed in on the man sitting on the bed, vacantly staring into the middle distance. Something in his chest hurt.

John looked up at him, his eyes blank and empty. "Sherlock?"

"Yes," Sherlock told him, impatient. He moved forward, crouching beside his friend. "But you know that. I realise that you may be upset at my appearance and at my having concealed the fact of my being alive, but there are more important things to worry about right now. We have to leave."

John just stared at him. Then he frowned, looking confused. "I don't understand."

"John . . ." But there was nothing to say. John had that look that Anderson always had when Sherlock was explaining things. That it was so complex that it wasn't even worth trying to follow.

Dr. John Watson spoke. "Not real anyway. Go 'way."

"What do you mean, 'not real'?" Sherlock demanded. "John, just come with me, I can get you out."

Mulishly John shook his head. "The . . . the pills," he said, gesturing inadequately. "I see stuff's not real."

Sherlock was trying to parse these words, get at what John was telling him when one of the offensive nurses pushed past him and into the room. "Hello Hammy!" she said in fatuous tones. "I am so happy to see you!"

The smile on her face was wide and vaguely horrifying to Sherlock. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it as John said, "I want . . ." he trailed off a moment, rubbing at his upper lip and cheeks which were starting to show significant growth of a beard and moustache. "My face," he said, a confused frown wrinkling his forehead. "It's not . . . good."

Sherlock's heart plummeted. John was . . . his friend, the frequently clever, hidden biochemical scientist wasn't able to even ask for a shave. He could see it in every movement. His eyes were locked onto John, unable to see anything else but the sight of that mind wasting away in front of him.

"Oh, silly!" exclaimed the woman. "Any alpha that wants you will want your fuzzy-wuzzy face! It makes you look all grown-up!"

"Oh," John said, looking confused and not angry as he should. "I guess."

She grabbed Sherlock's arm and manhandled him out of the cell, telling John. "You're a very clever omega!" Then she tugged him down the hall. "You're that Sherlock he talks about?" she asked, suddenly very sharp.

"Yes," Sherlock answered. "What is it you want to say?"

She glared. "You're that ridiculous alpha that has him convinced he's a doctor, are you? Do you think you _helped_ him?" she demanded. "Telling an omega that he could be something like that?"

"Do you just do everything that you're told at this institution?" Sherlock demanded of her, "Or do you ever _think?_ " he ends on a snarl. He can't think right now, because the man in that room isn't John Watson, can't be with the beard and the blank eyes and the way there's nothing there.

The nurse, overtired, perpetually single, devoted her life to caring for omegas to the detriment of everything, including her pet fish, snapped right back in her less-than-infinite wisdom. "There's a lot of harm in telling an omega that they're as smart as everyone else. Telling them that they can do fine on their own. They can't, they need protecting and lying to them is just going to get them hurt. It's going to get poor Hamish there, hurt." She glared a moment more, then as Sherlock turned to get back to John she slammed an alarm on the wall. "Security!"

He was dragged out, unresisting, as he plotted to get John out another way.


	5. Mycroft Surprised

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: The first PoV I had was just too short, so I added in John's section so that this chapter wouldn't be abysmally short. Now, it may be that Mycroft Holmes should have known about the omega drugs, but since I'm making him way nicer than in canon, and I'm relying on a fundamental of his view of the universe being wrong, he doesn't know. That is, as I said in the first chapter, if you believe a thing to be impossible, you'll never consider it as a motivating force behind something unless faced with irrefutable evidence that it exists to begin with.

* * *

Sherlock stormed into Mycroft's private room at the Diogenes Club. "You had better not have known about John and not told me, Mycroft," he declared. "I left to keep him safe, and if you've let him be taken by those . . . people, that institution, you will not like what I do."

Mycroft shot him a look of mild bemusement before responding, "You've found Dr. Watson, then?"

"Yes, at the Graham Ellison Omega _Sanctuary_ ," Sherlock stressed the final word with all the sarcasm he could bring to bear. "I need to get him out and I would prefer if it were not necessary to take up peripatetic meanderings to avoid arrest."

His brother straightened slowly from his previously relaxed appearance. "Sherlock," he said, sounding very cautious. "Are you implying that Dr. Watson is . . . is an omega?"

"More than implying," Sherlock said, "And I will have to congratulate him once he is himself again for avoiding your notice as much as anything else. Will you help me with this, Mycroft? Because I will break him out by more covert means if necessary."

Looking genuinely perplexed for the first time, Mycroft said, "But how can Dr. Watson be an omega? There has never been one-"

"Wrong!" Sherlock interrupted. "In fact, it's a problem that rests entirely on the normally used pheromonal suppressants. They cause brain damage. They _will_ cause damage to John if he is not retrieved quickly, Mycroft. If you do not believe me," Sherlock hated the way sentiment welled up in him, hated the way thinking of John's blank, now-stupid-looking face made some sort of lump well up in his throat and his chest feel strange. "If you do not believe me," he started again, "Then go there and visit him. You'll see what they've done to his mind. _His mind Mycroft._ "

His older brother stared a moment, then began issuing orders to his underlings. Sherlock left him to it and went to arrange backup plans just in case Mycroft failed.

* * *

John couldn't remember anymore why the line of pills under his mattress were important. He couldn't recall why 3 p.m. Tuesday was when he had to take them all, but he knew it was important. He knew that in the Before, when he'd just got here, when he was smart and knew things and understood more he'd written himself notes that he'd hid next to the pills. Notes telling him that he had to take the pills all at once on Tuesday, that it was important.

He didn't know why anymore, only that he'd been really angry then, and he'd probably still be angry if he knew why he was supposed to be angry about the nice ladies in the blue and pink clothes who helped him with washing up and were nice and cheerful.

He thought it might have to do with the not-Sherlock he'd seen. He knew that sometimes when he was on the normal pills he saw stuff that wasn't real. People and animals and stuff that no one else saw. He really wanted to see his alpha again, so it was nice to see him, even if it wasn't real. Even if Sherlock wasn't really his alpha.

Looking up, he saw that the calendar on the wall with the one big number on it and the month and the day, said it was Tuesday.

Something about Tuesday. He frowned. "Oh! Don't make a sad frowny face!" exclaimed one of the Nice Ladies. She was wearing all pink.

John smiled shyly at her before suddenly recalling. He needed to go to his room and take all the pills at once. It was . . . the clock said 2:15. That was really close to three. He'd written the note, so he knew he'd wanted to do it when he was smart.

For some reason the pills looked scary, although he didn't know why. But he'd wrote those notes to himself when he was smart. Before. He stuffed them further under his pillow. The ladies weren't supposed to see them. He looked at the clock. Still some time yet to go.

The Umbrella Man was there. John sat on the bed and stared back. Umbrella Man had something to do with Sherlock, John suddenly recalled. He'd had to let himself forget him because he had to choose what was important to remember and Sherlock and The Plan were what was important. "So, perhaps this mind issue was exaggerated," Umbrella Man said. "Truly, John, your differentiation from your secondary sex is quite remarkable. Is it a common mutation?"

"Wha'?" John asked, confused. "I don't . . ." he trailed off, not really sure what to say.

"Please," said the man with a smug look, "Don't try to dissemble, though you're far better than Sherlock ever let on. Of course the difficulties you face are . . . problematic, but I am certain there are ways to work around them."

John blinked at him. "I don't understand," he said. "I mean, you . . . Before I could, you . . . I knew you Before, so you . . . but I can't now." Overwhelmed as he felt the loss of everything from Before, and not sure he could ever be like that again, having seen not-real-Sherlock so recently, it was too much. His hands fisted in his hair and he curled up in a ball on the bed. Just the sight of someone from Before, someone he'd had to let go because he had to choose what to remember, it was scary and it hurt.

Why couldn't he see not-real-Sherlock instead? He didn't like Umbrella Man. Smelling like-but-not-like his alpha. Not fair.

"Doctor."

There was something strange in how his voice sounded, but John couldn't understand it. He didn't look up. "Go 'way. I know . . . knowed . . . knew you Before, but I can't . . . I can only keep important stuff. Not you." The strain of the complex ideas were giving him a headache and he didn't like Umbrella Man.

When he finally unballed he was alone in the room. The crumple of paper pulled him out of it. 3:00. He took the pills.

When the pain started, going from his stomach and out into the rest of him, he wondered if he was just stupid all the time and hadn't known before. Slumping to the ground, twitching and groaning he was sort-of aware of people panicking and the ladies in pink and blue doing things, but he was confused and hurting and a big dark wave rose up and overtook him.

John didn't know how much later it was that he woke up, just that he was in a hospital bed and felt like he was going to throw up. He also remembered that this was all part of his plan. But he had to wait until he was better.

"Hello Hammy!" exclaimed the omega-specialist who had walked into the room. That was annoying. He didn't recall exactly why, but it really was. "I'm Dr. Llewellyn. You're probably feeling bad," the man continued with his wide, fake smile.

There wasn't much to say, was there? "Yes."

That seemed to take the specialist aback a little. "Well," he said, "You were very bad and took lots of pills. They got all mixed-up inside you and made you very sick."

Still nothing he could say to that. Was that his plan? "Okay."

"So, you'll have to be here for a while. More than three days," the man told him in tones that said that he didn't think John could count that high. Honestly, the ability to count, at least to ten, was one of the last things to go because it was such a foundational skill and piece of knowledge. John smiled at the thought, because it meant he was getting smarter again.

The specialist took it as being for him, and John decided it wasn't worth the trouble of telling him differently. "Okay," he repeated when it seemed like the man was waiting for some sort of answer.

"Just rest up," Dr. Llewellyn said with that extra-wide smile, "And you'll be back to your home really fast." Then he set to checking John over, wrote some things on the chart which he put into the paper holding plastic thing on the wall to the right of the bed and strolled out, turning the TV on to Teletubbies as he left.

For a minute or two John was nearly hypnotised by the sight of the colourful things on the telly, before he shook himself and managed to get his hands on the clipboard. He didn't know why, just that things in it were important. In the process he felt a wave of unadulterated nausea and gagged, nearly vomiting. He looked at the pages, but the letters and numbers were a jumble, the handwriting was unreadable and nothing there made any sense.

He sat staring at the clipboard, feeling bereft. He was supposed to be able to understand it. He knew that, remembered from Before. Before was clearer now, and he felt himself perk up. He had a plan Before, and if it was clearer now then probably his plan was working. John reached to put the clipboard back and found himself hanging over the edge of the hospital bed, trying not to empty the contents of his stomach onto the floor. It took a very long time before he was able to smush it down and get the clipboard back in place. It was even longer before he was calm enough to look up again.


	6. Freedom

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: So, another two PoVs that are too short to be their own separate chapters. Also, Mycroft is way too nice in this fic, but this all goes back to that idea that the important thing for Sherlock and Mycroft is the mind, and not the physical. Also, hopefully my reasons for why Sherlock didn't figure it out sooner make sense. Sentiment. Feh.

* * *

"You were correct. I . . . apologise," Mycroft said.

Sherlock closed his eyes a moment. That meant that Mycroft had spoken to John. It had been two days since he'd seen John at the so-called sanctuary and Sherlock's plans were in place. He'd already collected all of John's things, made certain the replacements for the suppressants were completed and organised and that a safehouse was ready for them out in Yorkshire. He'd wanted it done correctly so that when they left they wouldn't be followed by police.

It would be better if John were released legally, because they wouldn't have to hide. "How was he when you saw him?"

"Overset," Mycroft said bluntly. "I . . ." he trailed off a moment, most out of character, and Sherlock finally looked at him. His older brother looked as shaken as Sherlock had felt. Still felt. "I am forced to see what you mean about his mind."

At that Sherlock said, "It isn't just John, Mycroft. It is all of them. I've seen a woman who seemed to have given an excellent attempt at solving the Riemann hypothesis, but that's all that's left of her mind. She's a vegetable but for being able to write out her attempted solution."

Mycroft looked ill. "I shall see what can be done," he said. _Sentiment is a weakness_. But this was something so deeply ingrained in both brothers that it spoke to them in ways that many other vile acts of humanity did not. So many acts were physical. A removal of material things, injury of the transport, but to ruin the mind like this was, to them both, unspeakable.

"Do I have your assistance at removing John from that institution?" Sherlock asked.

Mycroft nodded. "I have a second car waiting to take you there. All the paperwork should be in order."

Sherlock dropped the phone into his pocket and raced down the stairs where one of Mycroft's cars was already waiting. It galled him to use his brother's resources, as always, but pragmatism and worry for John made him forgo his usual irritation at it.

It wasn't until he got to John's room that he saw what he'd missed. So caught up in seeing John again for the first time in years, in seeing John's mind _ruined_ by these people, sentiment had made him miss it. More than that, it made a faint smile cross his lips. Barely hidden behind one pillow, poking out from the mattress were paper with notes on them, written in crayon, likely the only writing implements John had easy access to. It was the work of a moment to decipher the schedule, to see the timing John had worked out and understand his plan.

It also explained why these incompetents hadn't been able to produce John. "Which hospital was Doc . . . Mr. Waters taken to?" he asked the nurse, a different one than the last one.

"Bart's," she told him.

Sherlock nodded sharply and swept back out. He got into the car waiting outside, telling the driver, "Bart's." Then he pulled out his mobile and texted Mycroft. _John is in hospital. Has he escaped yet? SH_

There was a lengthy pause before Mycroft's response arrived. _He is missing, we are checking the CCTV. MH_

Sherlock leant back in the seat, feeling a weight lift off his chest. Clever, clever John. He knew that the suppressants he'd be given in the event of being taken to hospital for a drug overdose would be the ones that didn't endanger the mind. He'd waited for their guard to drop, had stolen pills from the nurses' station, no doubt specifically chosen for their cumulative effects at making John ill but not being too dangerous, then waited until the right moment to take them. By now John had recovered his mind and was doubtless making good on his escape. Thinking of John being clever wasn't perhaps the wisest thing he could do, though, Sherlock thought as he shifted in his seat. His transport was being unnecessarily unruly.

 _We have confirmation of him leaving the hospital,_ Mycroft texted, _but he seems to have become quite adept at evading the cameras. MH_

Sherlock thought quickly. He'd heard from Harry that part of the reason she and John had separated was out of a concern that people would expect the obvious, John would be with his alpha sister as his keeper. That meant it was unlikely John would have made his way to her. Sherlock texted her nonetheless because she was, among other things, a client, and would be relieved to know John had escaped. He knew that John likely wouldn't head to the safehouse in London out of a fear of leading people right to it.

That meant he'd go somewhere else, and Sherlock was going to have to figure this out another way. He would also have to convince John that he wasn't a hallucination. It had come to Sherlock in a flash of insight that John had suffered from some of the meticulously detailed other side effects of the traditional suppressants, hallucinations. That meant that when he'd seen John in the institution his friend had at least partly refused to go with him under the wrongful impression that he was seeing things . . . one person, that wasn't real.

His mobile chimed its message notification and Sherlock saw it was a text from Harry. Looking at it, it wasn't just a single text, thanking him in execrable 'netspeak', but also an attached file. It had the location of the old Waters family home, which she also thought was doubtful but wasn't going to omit just in case, and two other locations where John apparently stashed emergency bags for if someone had to escape. They were common knowledge in the little network and the alphas and betas involved would check on them, prepared to replace them if necessary. Harry had sent him some very useful details of the workings of their network, apparently having decided he was 'one of them' now.

And he supposed he was, because even if it had only been important to John he would have assisted for John's sake. But the concept alone was important to Sherlock personally. He couldn't imagine living those horror stories he'd heard and until Mycroft saw that something was done he wanted to offer some assistance himself. What if there were others like John, stifled and dying internally? It was genetic luck that he was an alpha and not an omega as much as anything. If he'd been born with a slightly different set of genetics he might be one of those half-vegetables in an institution.

Sherlock shook off the maudlin thought. The two emergency stashes were in Luton and Reading. He would have to start at Bart's and work from there to determine which direction John had taken and from there he would be able to find his friend.

* * *

Breaking out of anywhere, even a place he was as familiar with as St. Bart's, was absolute hell when every move you made threatened violent spasms of vomiting. John would take the persistent illness over the brain damage, but it didn't make it any less unpleasant.

He was never so grateful to peoples' inability to _see_ but not _observe_ as when he slipped down the hall in stolen scrubs and stocking feet towards the locker rooms where doctors and nurses kept their street clothing. One man moving purposefully in scrubs with a 'borrowed' ID card clipped to the front didn't raise an alarm. It took a few tries to find someone who had left shoes that fit, and some cautious wandering to find an unguarded wallet here and there with cash he could steal.

John refused to feel bad about it. If they didn't put him in this situation he wouldn't have to steal. It was part of why he'd often turned a blind eye to pickpockets taking from the obviously stupidly rich. Once he'd started spending time with Sherlock he'd even asked his friend to clarify how to tell the difference between the dressed up and the stupidly rich. Put someone in a desperate situation, you'd best be ready to deal with whatever outcome that desperation drove them to.

Once he was out he set to ducking the CCTV cameras stationed around the hospital, not wanting to know what it was that Mycroft had wanted when he'd visited at the institute. It only confirmed John's suspicions that the elder Holmes brother was enforcing the status quo. After all, what other possible reason could _Mycroft Holmes_ of all people have had to visit John while he was in the institute? He had to get away and couldn't take the risk of contacting Harry or anyone else. Once Mycroft brought his powers to bear, any slip-up could spell Certain Doom for John's rescue network.

His funds were enough to get him a train fare and a shaving kit. It was trouble to do the shaving in a toilet stall, but John had dealt with that sort of difficulty (that type of thing, not that exact scenario, mind) in Afghanistan and didn't want to draw attention by shaving in the semi-public areas of the loo and the excess of hair could be easily flushed.

John certainly felt much more himself, nausea or no, once he had a clean face again. The whole trip, getting out to Reading, collecting the money, small number of toiletries, the cap, which he put on at once, and the suppressant pills, was nervewracking. The cash, however, was enough to get him a ticket out into Wales and the tiny, minuscule island he'd determined would make a good hiding place all those years ago.


	7. Tracking, Attraction

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: A little more wanking crops up here along with a hopefully understandable fantasy on Sherlock's part. That is, hopefully it makes sense that Sherlock would have such a fantasy. The next part is the reunion and I'm giving that its own chapter, so I hope you all enjoy this one even if it's a little short.

* * *

Tracking John took far longer than Sherlock had expected. Actually, the challenge was delightful and this further proof of John's cleverness was making his inner alpha growl possessively. He'd never wanted an omega before, because however supposedly transcendent the sex was supposed to be, it couldn't be worth putting up with having one of the silly things in his home.

But now Sherlock knew better. Most omegas would still be dull, they were people after all, and most people were horribly dull, but there were John Watsons out there, and he wanted his Dr. John Watson.

He was spending his days working on the mystery of tracking John down, interspersed with desultory help with John and Harry's little network. It was how he'd come into contact with an omega entering oestrus. The suppressants didn't prevent oestrus, they just slowed the cycle down. An unbonded omega would have heats at the same rate as a bonded but unsuppressed omega, and a bonded omega would only have one once every two years. The enticing scent overlaid everything in an omega all the time without the suppressants.

But Sherlock had smelled it and had found himself staring fixedly at a young, not-all-that-bright, man, until the betas had tossed him out. The fresh air had cleared his head, but he'd been unable to concentrate as memories of something faintly resembling that scent floated around in his head. He'd smelled it before, faintly. It must have been John, and Sherlock had been forced to head to John's bedroom, curl up on his friend's bed and breathe in the scent John had left behind. It was a distraction he couldn't afford, but he couldn't stop being distracted so he had to deal with it.

He'd printed out pages of John's work, because sometimes he liked to write in the margins and overtop the paragraphs, highlighting particularly brilliant ideas. Just seeing the equations garnered a Pavlovian reaction of arousal. Sherlock had already read that part and had switched to the accounts of exactly how John's experiments had been conducted. He saw John in his mind's eye with beakers and flasks in front of him, carefully separating out elements of the pills he was examining.

Sherlock unzipped his trousers and pulled out his throbbing cock. He imagined John in the kitchen with him, taking notes on the effects of the salt used for de-icing in winter on the rate of decay of human flesh in cold weather. His hand tightened as the imaginary John scribbled some notes, biting his lip. He was bent over and Sherlock wanted to press himself into John. Out of his conscious control now, Sherlock's hips bucked.

It was so very good. Sherlock lost himself in carnal fantasy again, John's voice whispering biochemical equations while Sherlock knelt behind him, thrusting eagerly into a warm space that held him tightly and perfectly, and through it now ran the added dimension of scent. How would John smell in oestrus? Would he be as tempting and delicious-smelling as that young man only more so because it was _John_?

The John in his imagination was titrating something . . . no, taking samples. But that John was naked. Naked in the kitchen of 221B, wet and bent over and being fucked while he clinically took samples of the pre-ejaculate dripping from his own erection.

Sherlock was on his back now, unable to do anything but arch his hips upward and down again and press his nose into John's pillow.

Imaginary John was making desperate noises and telling Sherlock they needed a bigger sample and Sherlock obliged by redoubling his efforts at driving his omega to orgasm, John's hand moving over his own cock, the ejaculate landing in a beaker that Sherlock was holding to catch it. He couldn't think why they would need it, something about hormones, but the detective didn't care as the orgasm swept over him.

Exhausted by the effort, Sherlock drifted off despite himself.

He didn't sleep long, but the interlude was enough to re-energise his efforts to find John and bring himself to go visit Mycroft. A new assistant was seated at a desk near Mycroft's office and a quick glance showed that she was handling several delicate international affairs, and a single post-it told him this was the omega in Mycroft's office he'd heard about.

Before he could head into his brother's office, Mycroft stepped out, saw him and sighed, gesturing him in. Her eyes dilated and Sherlock realised he was seeing someone be attracted to Mycroft. It was horrifying. Who would be attracted to _Mycroft_? The thought was nauseating. "Please prepare a report for me on those files, Ms. Bisset," Mycroft said before ushering Sherlock in and firmly shutting the door behind them.

For once in his endlessly manipulative life Mycroft did not play games. "We have a credible sighting of John in Carmarthen, but he is no longer there." His eyes narrowed. "I do hope the . . . sentiment you feel for Dr. Watson," his nostrils flared leaving no doubt as to the meaning of his words, "will not hamper you in your search for him."

Sherlock barely kept himself from snarling. "I will be quite fine. Now, what is the information you have beyond a city name?"

"I have the report here," Mycroft replied, handing over the CCTV stills and a report of one of the multitudinous agents that were scattered all over the UK.

It was something of a relief to have a location to track John from. They'd found the bag in Reading missing (and had since arranged to replace it), but John had still slipped their net. Although, it had been honestly entertaining to watch the members of the OPS wander aimlessly about London, trying to find John. Harry wasn't as brilliant as her brother, but she was much sharper-tongued and they'd enjoyed an hour or so of making scathing comments while watching the social workers. "Have you made any progress on other fronts?"

His brother looked at him consideringly and then said, "Actually, it was quite easy to arrange for a small amount of funding to be sent to researchers. There is only a small number of those who are interested, but I expect to see results very quickly. Dr. Watson's research makes it clear that even a modicum of effort should have revealed a portion of the problem."

The media firestorm that could erupt from that might even be entertaining enough to pay attention to, Sherlock thought. "Excellent." They talked for a little longer, in actual accord for once about the problem at issue. When they were finished, Sherlock left, dropping off the message from Harry Watson to Caroline Bisset, the woman who handled most of the administrative subterfuge for the omega underground.

He was looking forward to mocking Mycroft when the omega finally won him over. It only made sense that the omega equivalent of Mycroft would be in love with The British Government, and there was every indication that Mycroft was interested in her as well.

But that was immaterial, and he had to find John. So, he set out for Carmarthen, hoping to pick up John's trail.


	8. Reunion

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: Reunion, smut, romance etc. etc.

* * *

Working as a fisherman had never been something John had thought he'd do. The work was hard, the other men were taciturn and all he could think was how grateful he was for his gift of mimicry. He still sounded a bit too posh, (well, posh relative to back-country dialect rather than the genuine public-school posh of the Holmes brothers) but he sounded like a Welsh sort of posh, and practice was wearing that down to match the local dialect.

Still, even with the loneliness and the isolation and the fact that two days working with the nets had told him this wasn't really the life for him, it was still better than being locked away in a padded room filled with stuffed toys.

The man who owned the boat, Marc Jones, had taken pity on John while he was looking around the small town for some sort of work. "Vaughan! Put your back into it!" the man shouted.

John . . . or Evan Vaughan now, turned his focus to pulling up the net, his left shoulder complaining the whole time. What else could he do? At least no one would look for him here. Maybe he'd be able to find a nice girl and settle down. He couldn't have children with her, of course, and he'd lost his chance at a life as a doctor, but it was a life.

So, he worked on the boat, letting the days pass. Then a storm struck. They'd headed out that morning, safe in the knowledge that the weather radar had indicated the storm was going to pass them all by, far out to sea. The meteorologists were wrong.

He did his best to follow orders and help with battening everything down on board, but something rattled loose, he didn't know what it was, just hoped absently it wasn't his fault, and slammed into poor Jake Morgan. The other man went down, bleeding, and John swore as he dragged the man into the ship's cabin.

And it was like he'd never left Afghanistan. The storm morphed into the sound of shelling, cracks of loose objects hitting the sides of the boat were the rattle of gunfire, and the fisherman were the beleaguered and confused soldiers he'd sometimes had to dragoon into acting as his nurses while he tried to work with missing and substandard equipment.

"He's nicked an artery," John said, as he used something rubbery as a tourniquet. "I need you to fill that pot with the rubbing alcohol and put this in." He thrust what would be a makeshift needle and surgical thread at the man who'd come in behind him. John was at the sink, washing his hands in the cold water then added a layer of the antiseptic handwash.

Peter Howell followed his orders, and John told him, "Grab his leg here, I need to set it while that line sits a minute." Luckily Jake was already unconscious, but John just shifted and strapped, used his improvised materials to stop the bleeding and get Jake settled. And when Jake's heart stopped from shock and blood loss, John did CPR and got him going again while the other men managed to get the boat to the docks where an ambulance was waiting.

John and the paramedics got Jake loaded in, John telling them what they needed to know along with his recommendations for emergency surgery and antibiotic treatment for the wounds.

And then the ambulance was pulling out, the storm was over and the men from the fishing boat were looking at him like . . . John didn't know what they were looking at him like.

"You're a doctor?" asked Marc.

And a posh voice John thought he'd never hear again said, "Several times decorated veteran of the RAMC, actually. Army trauma surgeon Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers."

The exclamations of the fishermen, several of whom wanted to know what a trauma surgeon was doing on their boat instead of in a war or some hospital, faded away and John staggered. "You're dead," he said to Sherlock. "You died. I'm hallucinating again. Oh God."

"Your friends can see me," Sherlock said, walking forward. "And if you're going to flinch, perhaps you should wait until you're off this dock so you don't fall into the water."

John looked up at Marc for reassurance. "I don't know about him being dead," Marc said, "And if you thought so I can understand thinking you're seeing a ghost, but if you are, we're all seeing him."

It was enough. John walked slowly forward. "You're not dead."

"No," Sherlock told him. "I faked the suicide. I had to," he said, the words suddenly rushing out of him. "Moriarty had snipers on you. You, Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. If I didn't jump you'd die. I couldn't let them kill you."

He was vaguely aware of muttered variations on, "Bloody hell," and, "Fuck me sideways," being said by Marc and the others.

"You made me watch, you bastard," John growled, the pain of seeing the alpha he . . . his best friend jump to his death, hearing the sound of crying over the mobile fresh all over again. "Did you ever think about what it would do to me?" he demanded.

"No," Sherlock said. "Not un-"

Without conscious intention, John's fist shot out and slammed into Sherlock's face. "You complete and utter bastard," he growled. "I had to see you _die_. I had to go to your _funeral_. I had to listen to everyone act like I was weak and pathetic for being that gutted over you and I _was_ that gutted over you! You have no idea what it was like-"

Sherlock interrupted. "I didn't until I heard you'd vanished and Mycroft claimed he thought you'd commit suicide. And then . . ." he trailed off, swallowing sharply. "And then for just a moment I thought you had and I realised what I had put you through."

His al . . . best friend looked wan and tired under his usual posturing, and John considered him a moment. "I've got a room I rent down the way," John told him. "We can go there to talk." For a moment, he turned back to Marc, who'd given him a chance when no one else would, and asked, "Unless you need me to help with things on the boat?"

"You just saved Jake's life," Marc said. "G'wan with you. Just let me know if I need to replace you, Evan . . . John."

John nodded and he and Sherlock quietly walked down the street of the isolated village on its tiny rock of an island. They arrived at the house where John was renting a room and headed up the stairs together. John sat on the bed while Sherlock took the wooden chair at the small desk in the corner. As they sat facing each other, a memory from that awful time at the institute snapped into clarity. "You were there, at the institute," John said, the shock slamming into him suddenly.

Looking oddly distressed, Sherlock nodded. "I was. I . . . Harry, she came right after I got back. Gave me your research, asked me to find you."

"And then you saw me," John said, feeling bitter. This was where Sherlock would go. He would have seen John at his worst and would have been repulsed.

"I was going to get you," Sherlock said. "John, that idiot nurse dragged me off, but I was going to take you out. Then I realised it would be easier if it were proper, legal. But you," a smile crossed Sherlock's face, surprising John. It was the smile Sherlock got when John's medical expertise so rarely allowed him to beat Sherlock to a conclusion. It was the smile Sherlock had when John shot a cabby for him. "You were clever enough to escape on your own." John felt his jaw drop as Sherlock's pupils blew wide and the alpha's voice dropped so low John swore he could feel it vibrating the floor. "My brilliant omega."

He knew he was parroting, but it was nothing that John had expected. He'd expected Sherlock to be repulsed by John when the government-issue suppressants had been working on him. "Brilliant?"

"Brilliant," Sherlock said firmly. "Harry showed me your research, John. You should have a doctorate for that. It's genius. The way you analysed the hormonal variations in female betas, alphas and omegas of both primary sexes was . . ." his alph . . . the alpha took in a deep breath, looking for all the world like a man thinking of something pornographic in nature. "It was _riveting_. But how did you account for the variances between male alpha hormonal reaction to alpha suppressants and the female alpha? The data clearly indicated the primary sex has a powerful effect on the biochemical components of the hormone response."

They needed to talk about more things than this, but it had been so long, and John had never been able to talk to anyone about it who could understand it all. The answer came to him, and soon they were talking, just as easily as they ever had about crimes, music or cross-contamination of human feet and sandwich meats. It was blissful, because Sherlock had majored in chemistry in the time he'd been at uni, understood what John was saying and delighted in the conversation.

John didn't even realise what was happening until Sherlock half tackled him to the bed, still murmuring about chemical equations while rubbing a very interested erection into John's hip. "Wait," John gasped, even as he arched his back, pressing up into Sherlock. "Are you turned on by . . . by biochemistry?"

"Not precisely," murmured Sherlock. "I have never been aroused by physical attributes, John, just mental ones."

John thought it over while his hands with a mind of their own tugged at Sherlock's shirt trying to get at the skin underneath. "Does that mean if I'd talked biochem with you before we could have been doing this sooner?" John asked him. "Because," and just to test the hypothesis, John rattled off one of the half-baked theoretical constructs from his uni years about using animal hormones to defray or otherwise control omega and alpha hormonal variance.

Sherlock responded by tearing at John's clothes, an aggressive growl making John harder than he'd ever been. Soon they were naked and Sherlock was desperately working John's vaginal opening with his fingers. While it was normally closed up between heats in the male omega, something that had allowed John to have a sex life without being outed, with the correct stimulation it was possible to artificially get it open. Sherlock muttered to John, "I am not carrying any transmittable illnesses and you cannot become pregnant outside of oestrus, are you-"

"Yes, Sherlock," John moaned. "I'm clean. God, so good. Please!"

And then he was wet and open and Sherlock was easing into John and everything was a perfect blur of growling, thrusting and touching. His alpha was thrusting so perfectly, driving himself into the omega and clung on because the scent of Sherlock's arousal kept driving him closer and closer to the edge of a precipice and then his head flew back as ecstasy slammed up and down all his nerve endings and Sherlock's hips slammed forward one last time and John could feel the gush of liquid inside.

The alpha collapsed, panting, and John sighed, enjoying the weight on top of him. It would get awkward soon, but for the moment the closeness was lovely. Then Sherlock rolled off him and pulled him close. For several minutes John just luxuriated in it all, but eventually reality made its way into his consciousness. "What are we going to do, Sherlock?" he asked. "I can't go back, the OPS will-"

"They will do nothing," Sherlock told him definitively. "Not only do I have the appropriate," his voice dropped to a disgusted sneer at his next words, " _Ownership papers_ , but Mycroft-"

And John was reminded. "Mycroft knows, Sherlock," he said. "He visited me. I couldn't remember him, I'd had to let go of anything that wasn't important-"

Sherlock snickered. "Unimportant. I can't wait to say that to him."

"This is serious. Why would he be there? He must have known. If he knows then the others, I have to-" John was already struggling to get up. He had to warn the rest of their network, move it our of London. Maybe to Manchester. Some other large city, but further away.

"You are not making sense, John," Sherlock said, pulling the omega back. Then, "Oh. No, John, Mycroft didn't know until I told him. He believed all the same things about omegas everyone else does. It was not until he saw you in the institute that he understood and believed me. He will help, John. He _is_ helping."

At that, John turned and faced his alpha. Perched on the edge of the bed, Sherlock sitting up and facing him. "Mycroft is helping?"

"John, they're destroying your _minds_." The emphasis Sherlock placed on the word was significant. "This," he waved an arm, indicating his body, "is just transport. Mycroft may indulge his transport more than I do, but the thought of minds being stifled, _killed_ , like this, it's horrendous."

Empathy. That's what this was. John was, for the first time, seeing Sherlock (and by a sort-of extension, Mycroft) have empathy for other people. Not just specific individuals that he had come to have some sort of appreciation for, but for a faceless mass. "Donovan will never believe it. You didn't have empathy for Moriarty's victims during the pips mess, didn't seem to care until I was at the pool myself. You didn't seem to care so many times, but this is . . . is this sentiment?" John teased gently.

Sherlock seemed about to roll his eyes, but then he reached out and pulled John against him. "I . . . I returned and you were missing, John," he said into John's shoulder. "Mycroft thought you'd killed yourself-" John couldn't help but make a rude noise in response. "I know. But Mycroft has always overestimated the effect sentiment has on your disposition. But then I found out you were an omega, that you'd been taken, and I saw you there . . . Oh, John, I was terrified. The mind I'd found in your research, it's beautiful, John. You are beautiful, and they'd . . . I thought they might have destroyed it. Killed you. Because if they'd done it, you would have been just as dead as if you'd killed yourself."

Tears pricked at John's eyes, because somehow he'd found the one person who, without ever experiencing anything like what John had been through still understood. Understood that once the pills reached their full effect it destroyed you. It left you without so many of the things that made you who you were. "I was afraid they would," he admitted. "The second day it was already so hard to hang on to any part of the plan, but I'd needed a second day to be sure of the schedule. And then I had to let things slip away. I couldn't afford to remember anything but the plan and you."

"Me?" Sherlock asked. "You . . . surely there were other things you needed to know more," he said, sounding baffled.

It just slipped out. "I couldn't forget my alpha."

Those lovely pale arms tightened around him. "My omega," rumbled the deep voice in his ear.

The moment was interrupted by a knocking on the door. "If the pair of you are finished in there, I think we need a talk, omega to omega," said John's landlady.


	9. Think of the Children

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: So, it's kind of just transitioning from Sherlock and John being all emotionally warm and squishy into the rest of the fic. We're kind of starting the wrap-up because I've pretty much covered all the plotty parts of the story. So, if you were here for plot, that's just about done. There's a little more smut to go, but this is mostly it for actual story.

* * *

Sherlock reflected that, no matter what was going to happen next, he wasn't letting John go. John lacked Sherlock's perspicacity of observation, it was true, but he understood Sherlock, and his grasp of biochemistry was exquisite and, the detective had to admit, better than Sherlock's. But that made John _better_ and made Sherlock want to ignore the landlady and take John back to bed with him instead.

"No," John said from where he was tying his shoelaces.

That was most unfair. "But John, she wouldn't interrupt-"

"I think I know Mrs. Blevins better than you do, and yes she would." John had that unequivocal tone in his voice that meant he knew something about people better than Sherlock did. John was usually right about these sorts of things, so Sherlock let his partner shove him out of the room and down to the kitchen.

As they entered the kitchen, decorated in the sort of style people liked to declare 'homey', Sherlock looked her up and down and said, "I assume the reduction in identifiable sexual scenting characteristic is a factor of aging as it is in alphas." John elbowed him, and Sherlock glared back.

She shot the detective an unimpressed look and said, "I don't know about that. I had no education, being an omega and all, but I was sickly as a baby and as a child, and when I realised what those suppressant did, I ran."

John sat across from her. "I would have too," he said. "But my sister helped me, and we were able to hide. I was able to pretend to be a beta-"

The woman's eyes went wide. "How?" she demanded.

"John is a genius," Sherlock said, smugly. "He created a variant on suppressants that has none of the damaging side-effects." It made him feel a very alpha pleasure. His omega was superior and brilliant and an excellent shot.

"Sherlock, stop fantasising about me reading medical textbooks at you," John said, "And sit down."

Mrs. Blevins glanced between them and seemed to make a decision. "When I got out here I was lucky to meet my husband. I'd been running from my family and the government omega trappers and I was just lucky that so few people knew what an omega was supposed to smell like. But Howell was a good man and protected me. The whole town did. We didn't know what to do about the government beyond hiding my children and then my grandchildren."

"The whole town?" John asked. "I thought it was just the normal suspicion about outsiders," he admitted.

She shot him a wry look. "It's a little of that too," she admitted. "You sound . . . sounded like you were from the poshest part of Cardiff for a bit, you know."

Sherlock shifted, already getting bored. "You want John's help in some way with your grandchildren," he surmised. "I assume not merely in relation to keeping them from government interference, but perhaps some of them, you believe, have potential for university careers, a potential not merely hampered by the government, but by the nature of omega heats."

The woman blinked at him, and John sighed. "He's always like that. Got the attention span of a five-year-old after five bags of jelly babies unless he's decided he's interested." John turned to him. "What have I said about letting people tell you things in their own time instead of answering for them?"

"Not good?"

"Bit not good, yeah," John replied with a soft smile, clearly recalling that first time he'd offered Sherlock that advice.

"I will endeavour to be . . . better," Sherlock offered. He was unwilling to leave John, would have been unwilling to leave if John had been merely his beta best friend.

A hand reached out and twined their fingers together, saying without words, _I missed you too, you git._

And then John was the warm Dr. Watson who soothed their clients and got the information from them that Sherlock might have been able to, but did so without ruffled feathers and refusals to ever deal with the detective again. "I can put you in contact with my sister, or with our government contact, and they'll work out firstly getting you the suppressants, and then Caroline will figure out how to get your omega family members proper IDs so that they can do . . ." John waved a hand a little vaguely, "Whatever. Whatever it is they wish. They'll have an advantage over most of the omegas in our network, actually," John told her. "Unlike the others, including myself, there won't be any records of them having been omegas."

The woman's face broke into a smile. "You have a . . . a network?"

"A small one," Sherlock said. "Really, if Ms. Bisset weren't quite so ridiculously attracted to my brother she might be better as the person who runs it."

John raised an eyebrow at him. "Caroline's attracted to _Mycroft_?"

"Horrifying, isn't it?" Sherlock was very amused at the baffled look that crossed John's face. Then John looked contemplative.

Mrs. Blevins cleared her throat. John flushed and apologised. "I also hate to be crass, but if you can afford to pay us, it would be helpful. The suppressants do cost money to make and while we pass them along at the cost we pay my suppliers, they charge extra for income purposes and all that."

"Understandable," the woman nodded. "I also wanted to know-"

She was interrupted by a banging at the door and then a younger woman half threw herself into the room. "Tilda! They said that some posh detective just arrived from London! We have to . . ." Her eyes went wide and she trailed off at the sight of Sherlock in the kitchen.

Panic, a beta, one with the faintest whiff of an omega around her arriving at Mrs. Blevins' home at that very moment? "You are the sister to the alpha that bonded with Mrs. Blevins' middle child," he observed. "You are concerned that I will expose you in some way. I assure that is not the case, nor was it ever my intention."

"Tilda?" the younger woman said, turning to the older for reassurance.

Matilda Blevins turned to her son's sister-in-law and smiled. "Evan here is an omega. This is his alpha."

The beta woman looked at them, then seemed to take John in. "Oh my Lord. You're Dr. John Watson. The kids love your blog," she said, sounding stunned. "You looked familiar, but I thought it was just one of those things where you think you recognise someone but they just have a face like someone else."

Sometimes Sherlock wondered about people. Scratch that, he always wondered about people and the incredibly witless things they would come out with. John had been here for weeks, this woman had clearly thought he was recognisable and had done nothing to ascertain why. It boggled the mind.

"Doctor?" Mrs. Blevins echoed. She suddenly had tears in her eyes. "You're a doctor."

For a moment, Sherlock was baffled by this. It wasn't a complicated notion.

John smiled at her, nodding. "Exactly," he said to her, smiling. "They're wrong about us."

And Sherlock understood. He thought about Mrs. Blevins, having to run away from her home in the 1960s, without resources, in a time when even alpha women were seen as inferior, raised to see herself as less capable intellectually without proof, and with a whole society claiming that her son and whichever of her grandchildren were omegas were also intellectually inferior. John was definite proof that something she no doubt believed but had no way to prove was true. That she was the intellectual equal if not better of many people. "Evan . . . Doctor. Watson you said?"

"Captain John Watson of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, trauma surgeon with the RAMC," Sherlock enumerated for the second time that day. It was a roll of intellectual achievement that he had already thought of with pride, even before John's prodigious scientific labour had been brought to his attention.

"Sherlock," John said reprovingly. He never did like to have it all laid out quite like that.

And because he never understood why John was so reticent about his achievements, Sherlock added. "You should have found a better hiding place for your Victoria Cross."

"I didn't realise my foot locker . . . what am I saying? It's you. The mere notion of a lock just seems to scream to you to look inside."

He'd missed this. "Don't be dull, John."

In the end, oddly, it's Sherlock who spends time with the children, telling them that they can be whatever they wish. The oldest girl is already remarkably talented with the tenth rate violin her parents have provided and takes to lessons from him with the alacrity of a born concertmaster. The youngest likes talking about insects and willingly listens to Sherlock tell him about bees. There are twins, one omega, one beta, who had been wondering if it would be possible to share ID and qualifications in some clever way who like playing with computers and Sherlock introduces them to the way that programming works outside of basic school lessons in this little back-of-beyond village.

When John comes to join them he tells them about adventures in Afghanistan while he gives them complete physicals Sherlock feels that same warmth in his chest he normally gets when his clients thank him in satisfaction or he inducts a new member of his Homeless Network. Assisting these children whose minds might never have had a chance to be more was rewarding in the same way.

Mrs. Blevins' middle child turned out to be a son with a hobby in statistics, and Sherlock found himself on the end of an impulsive hug after he introduced the man to a few of the equations that got bandied around in higher level analytical circles. It wasn't so much that the househusband wanted to be a professional statistician, but the thought was a gift on its own, and watching him happily work his equations about tide height averages was . . . pleasant. He was a dull person, like most people, but it was . . . good to see simple pleasure in a mental exercise.

They stayed a week, John visiting with his former shipmates, all of whom clapped him on the back in hearty thanks for saving the last member of the crew. John also acted as a go-between for his little network, arranging with Mrs. Blevins to perhaps take in one or two omegas that had been broken out recently and give them a chance to adapt to the real world before they made their way into some other life. Sherlock found himself inundated with the children, not all of whom were omegas, but all were interested in music lessons or bugs or detective work and he could hand them off to their parents when they became too tiresome, so it wasn't awful.

At the end of the week, courtesy of Caroline Bisset and Mycroft the omega childrens' new identification arrived along with a supply of suppressants and directions for the children to begin taking them when the first stages of sexual maturation began. "Not one moment sooner," John cautioned them.

And then they were heading back to London together, back home to 221B. "Lestrade has some series of locked room murders he's been wanting me to look at," Sherlock told John as they sat on the train. "Apparently this one has been doing recreations of Caspar David Friedrich in blood on the walls and yet they can't find any evidence to pinpoint the murderer yet."

"Well, even if you find it easy to solve in the end you have to give them points for creativity," John commented.

"There is that," Sherlock allowed. "You will be coming to the scene with me?" he asked.

His omega smiled. "I wouldn't miss it. I haven't seen Lestrade in a while and I probably owe him an apology or two over how I reacted to him after you . . ." John flinched at the memory.

"I am sorry, John," Sherlock said, contrite. This awareness of what his actions had done to John was something he would have to consider carefully.


	10. Insulting and Ill-Conceived

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: Okay, so this isn't plot, this is me trying not to make the last chapter way way longer than the others. Also, you should all thank Kurama's Foxy Rose for forcing me to clean up a loose end. True, it's not going to matter until the epilogue, but you should offer up thanks. The smut will be in the next part, which will also be longer as well.

* * *

They settled in together at 221B as though nothing had happened. Sherlock kept ridiculous experiments in the fridge and random places about the flat, John threw out things that would interfere with the food or ruin the milk (when they had milk, it still seemed to vanish like they had a faerie creature of some sort living in the house). They went out to Sherlock's cases together and raced around London chasing criminals together and then they would fall into bed and shag.

Alright, John had to admit some things had changed, mostly for the better, though. For one thing, even if the OPS tracked him down again, Sherlock had all the correct documentation so they couldn't take him. Peace of mind was a wonderful thing. But even better were long evenings with Sherlock hanging over John's shoulder as he ran the numbers on the suppressants, trying to tweak the formula, followed by Sherlock tugging John to bed because watching John experiment aroused the alpha in ways that John found rather incredible.

Sherlock would sometimes dragoon John's help with his experiments, and not in a I'm-looking-for-data-John-eat-this-unidentifiable-object sort of way, but actually doing the fun analysis and hypothesising.

John had lost his spot at Sarah's surgery, which ultimately wasn't that surprising, but he'd managed to find an on-call position at the Royal Free A&E. So, he worked there when he wasn't working with Sherlock, and sometimes he'd harass Sherlock in the middle of a shift about street drugs he didn't have time to check about, or with questions about some odd cases he was seeing, which would bring his alpha down to loiter around the emergency and make a nuisance of himself.

Quite interesting had been the day that Lilian Yates, the social worker who'd got him captured found her way onto the edges of one of Sherlock's crime scenes. It wasn't gruesome, just the work of someone who thought he was Voldemort apparently, and Sherlock was muttering darkly about pop culture and idiots while members of the NSY repeated, "But who ever heard of someone being scared to death?" and then snickering and Lestrade looked like he needed morphine for his inevitable headache.

"How are you holding up, Greg?" John asked. "Because this looks like it's going to drive you bonkers."

The DI sighed expansively. "All I ask is that they all shut up for five minutes. Just five minutes without Harry Potter jokes or Sherlock whinging. Is it too much to ask?"

John was about to reply when a familiar and irritating voice spoke up from the mouth of the alley. "Oh! It _is_ you, Hammy! What are you doing here?" John turned to see Lilian Yates with a bizarre look on her face. She was trying for the bright and cheery smile most people who worked with omegas put on, because some benighted study in the 1970s had said that omegas reacted better to happy people, but was also horrified at the crime scene. For one moment John felt the familiar surge of panic.

Then Sherlock's voice rose above the silence. "Oh, for fuck's sake," he snapped. That got everyone's attention, because Sherlock never swore. It was beneath him. John swore like a sailor (or a soldier), but Sherlock always refused to use that sort of language, preferring to cut people to shreds with unadulterated wit. He strode up to the woman, "Get off my crime scene you ridiculous purveyor of brainless twittering." Apparently he was very incensed, because that definitely wasn't up to his usual standards.

"But we need to fetch Hamish Waters back to the-"

"Fetch who?" Lestrade interrupted. "Listen, Ms?"

"Yates," she said. "Lilian Yates. I'm a social worker with the OPS and I realise you may think it's cute to have an omega as a mascot-"

Sherlock cut her off. "An omega? Here?"

"Really?" John cut in. "You think the police have the free time to let a useless hanger-on loiter about for no reason?" Lilian Yates took in a breath, but John was ready. After all, Anderson had been particularly galling that morning. "Now that I think of it . . . Oi! Anderson!"

"Ha, bloody ha, Watson!" Anderson snapped. "You're as bad as your boyfriend!"

Sherlock's lips were twitching as he said. "Nonsense, Anderson couldn't possibly be an omega, they're supposed to be ridiculously impossible to resist sexually."

"Sherlock," Lestrade said disapprovingly. "Ms Yates, we are attempting to look at this crime scene. I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

She ignored him and took another step towards John with that look affixed on her face. Donovan muttered something about her new record-holder for creepy in the background and John called on his inner Sherlock, so to speak. "Are you completely lacking in cognitive processing power or do you have a gift for denial that surpasses a political analyst's assumptions about the long-term memory of the general populace?"

"I . . . what?"

"Assuming for a moment that," John paused to allow the sheer weight of his unadulterated distaste for the nickname to permeate his response, " _Hammy_ Waters were here. Even assuming this person were me, which is clearly what you have assumed, why would you think a police force would have a mascot at a crime scene with multiple murders? Furthermore, since the common supposed wisdom regarding omegas is that the 'poor creatures' panic at the sight of death and sadness, which would mean that if an omega were here, he or she would be having a panic attack, it would be unutterably inconvenient for everyone, even the omega."

She didn't quite know what to make of this. She nonetheless rallied and went deep into denial. "I'm very impressed at the time you've all spent training Hammy to memorise this speech-"

Everyone at the scene were now exchanging glances, because she seemed very determined to believe that John Watson, the mad doctor that followed Sherlock Holmes everywhere was an omega, and Watson had a lot of flaws, but omega-grade stupidity wasn't one of them. Donovan interrupted the woman. "Okay, Ma'am," she said in a soothing tone reserved for people having minor psychotic breaks, "Why don't you go sit down over here," she took the other woman by the arm and started towing her off the crime scene, "And we'll call someone in a minute, alright?" She jerked a head at one of the uniformed officers to have someone sit with Yates.

And when John stepped closer to Sherlock he felt an almost subsonic growling in the alpha's chest. Sherlock was feeling every inch of his alpha response to a threat. More specifically, a response to a threat to the alpha's mate. "Sherlock, it's fine," he murmured quietly.

"It is _not_ fine," Sherlock snarled, but softly so the police around them wouldn't get suspicious. With a whirl of his Belstaff he went back to the case, determinedly ignoring the watching OPS social worker. When Sherlock had resolved nearly everything but the precise means the victims had been killed, something that was going to require the toxicology report and coroner, John walked over to the woman. "I need to ask you something, Ms. Yates," he said. "Have you ever seen a military ID?"

She blinked, but it appeared that she'd been worn down by the derision of NSY's finest. "Yes," she said, sounding very cautious. "My father was in the Navy. Why?"

"Would you think something like that was easy to fake?" John inquired.

"No," she said, "It wouldn't be. Why?" She was looking a little irritated.

John pulled out the card he still carried with him, even though he'd been discharged from the army. The card that labelled him as clearly having been a part of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. He held it in front of her, watching as she read it, eyes wide. "Captain John Watson, RAMC," he said. She was staring at him, jaw dropped. "Now, you have two rational options," he told her. "You can believe that I am not," he shot her a look of disgust, " _Hammy_ Waters, but that I am John Watson, a doctor licensed to practice with the NHS, a former trauma surgeon and captain in the army, in which case your baby talking is insulting and exceeding ill-conceived." He paused to give her a moment to take that in. "Or you can decide that I am Hamish Waters who has been missing all these years, and accept that perhaps the fact that I have pretended to be John Watson for nearly twenty years now without anyone the wiser means that your baby talking is insulting and exceedingly ill-conceived." She looked absolutely poleaxed. "I suppose you could continue in denial, of course," he added, "And pretend that everything I've said and done today is nothing more than parroting, but I do wonder who could teach someone to parrot based on this many contingencies."

He put the identification card back in his wallet and left her looking stunned and gormless. It felt very good. As he caught up to Sherlock, the detective asked, "Feel better?"

"Well, I was always told I shouldn't hit girls," John told him. "And I'm not totally sure she has the emotional maturity of an adult." They glanced back at her where she sat with her mouth still gaping. And then a fly flew into her open mouth and she choked and spat and pawed at her mouth, sending the two men into helpless giggles.


	11. Heat

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: The heat smut someone's been waiting for.

* * *

And then suddenly John's heat was fast approaching, and plans would have to be made. He had arranged to rent a cabin far out of London where they wouldn't be disturbed, and had been compiling a list of things they'd want, from birth control to food and water supplies to extra sheets. Sherlock was meanwhile quite blase about the whole thing and there wasn't really anything that could be said to make him take it seriously.

That was, until Mycroft arrived with Caroline Bisset in tow, her looking smug about the bonding bite on her throat and Mycroft looking like he'd had an encounter with God, the Devil or both at the same time.

Sherlock was about to make his usual snide remarks at his brother when Mycroft, much to Sherlock's bewilderment, grabbed the detective by the arm and firmly dragged him into the bedroom, firmly shutting the door.

"So, how did it go with Mycroft?" John asked. "I can see you got him to bond with you, congratulations by the way, but he looks a little . . ." he gestured because he wasn't sure what Mycroft looked like, save that stunned fell short as a descriptor, clearly.

The other omega smiled, amused, and said, "Well, he was taken by surprise, I'll say that. Do you know, he actually thought he could rise above my heat? That he could apply mind over matter or some such thing."

"I wouldn't know," John admitted. "I know that _I_ go mad during a heat, but I've never been anywhere near an alpha in one except Harry."

Caroline looked surprised. "Not even one of the network?"

John shook his head. "Especially not them. I know I don't do most of the day-to-day running anymore, not since we brought you on, not since Harry was sober enough to take over, but I worried about causing strife. I'd seen too many alphas get weird and possessive when I was young to want to risk it." Then he looked up at her. "Mycroft really thought that? I mean, I'd expect it from Sherlock, in fact that's exactly what I've been getting from Sherlock, but he never listens to anyone."

"Mycroft doesn't either," Caroline said. "Frankly, I think he's in there warning Sherlock right now."

"Oh Lord," John said, sighing. "If he acts the way he always does, Sherlock's going to be even less prepared just for the sake of trying to prove Mycroft wrong."

She rolled her eyes. "I love him, I really do, but Mycroft really doesn't understand people. He's so good at manipulation that he can skate by, but he just has no idea."

They settled into a comfortable chat about dealing with two men who were smarter than everyone else about everything but other people.

Meanwhile, in Sherlock's bedroom, Mycroft set out to warn his brother.

"I suppose I should congratulate you," Sherlock said, smugly. "I see Ms. Bisset succeeded at winning you over in the end. Really, I don't think you could do better."

His brother shook his head, silently. There was an interminable pause, then he spoke. "While I am . . . happy," he paused to consider the inadequate nature of the word choice, "to have bonded with Caroline, I am more concerned with the specific circumstances in which it happened."

"You are overset," Sherlock observed. "You were overcome by her oestrus."

Mycroft looked shaken and vaguely horrified. "As will you be - no, Sherlock," he cut his brother off before Sherlock could object that he clearly had more control over his transport than Mycroft. "It . . . I've never even imagined anything like it. It was as though every thought and concern I had ever had was just gone. There was just an instinctive drive to . . . to mate and . . . I couldn't think. It's no wonder omega suppressants were developed. It's horrifying."

It sounded horrifying, but equally horrifying was what Sherlock could also read. "You are going to do it again at Caroline's next oestrus," Sherlock said slowly. "The experience was that pleasurable that despite what it does to your mind, you will do it again."

With a slow, jerky nod, Mycroft agreed. "I had to warn you, Sherlock. We agree on few things, but I could not let you go into this without a warning from a source you could trust, not one of those idiots writing barbarically stupid autobiography."

Sherlock had, indeed, read a few accounts of such events and had found them overwrought and poorly written. But if Mycroft said it was this terrifying loss of self, then it had to be, because Mycroft would not lie about such a thing. He might lie or mislead about any number of things, but some things were sacrosanct, even for the pair of them.

"John already has made plans," Sherlock said. "I . . . appreciate the warning."

It was something he was grateful for as the unutterably enticing scent of an omega began to build in the flat. He found himself for the first time fixating not on John's mind, but on an assortment of parts of John's body. Staring at his mate's tautly muscled chest and thinking about touching it, staring at John's strong thighs and imagining them wrapped around his waist and nearly hypnotised by the arse hidden in those dull but tight jeans.

The fixation was distracting and irritating, but John reminded him that it was normal for other people to fixate on body parts, so Sherlock carefully filed the information into his mind palace under things-ordinary-people-do-that-make-little-sense but that might be useful in determining a motive at some point. He'd sort through it properly later and decide at that point. It was rarely a good idea to instantly delete knowledge. Better to let it percolate and be certain of its inutility before losing it.

It was a signal, however, that they should head for the little cabin John had rented so that John's oestrus could go safely. As they sat down on the bed, John told him, "Well, this is it. Tomorrow it'll be . . . on." He looked nervous. "I've never shared a heat before."

"You've said," Sherlock reminded him. "What are you concerned about?"

"That it will go poorly, that even if it goes well you'll be so put off by losing control in rut that you don't even want to see me anymore-"

That was one thing Sherlock could reassure John about. "I promise you, John, that I will always want to be with you. Your mind-"

"But-"

Sherlock turned instead to collecting bottled water and preparing spare sheets for the bed. John was working himself into a lather, and while the detective had many talents, being comforting was not one of them. Turning to do something useful would be of more value to them both than spouting cliches about love and whatnot.

The next morning, nothing mattered at all but his omega.

Sherlock woke to a deliriously incredible scent drenching every inch of the bedroom. He sat bolt upright, eyes locked on the sleeping omega beside him. His mate had wrapped his arms around the alpha in his sleep and was nuzzling at the already-aching erection. The alpha extricated himself from those arms efficiently, rolling his mate over so that he could get at the omega's vaginal entrance. It was open and loose and slick, and John's hips were already twisting against the sheets, even in his sleep.

"John," Sherlock growled. "John, wake up."

His mate's eyes snapped open, and then a low moan emerged, wrapping around Sherlock's cock and making the incipient knot throb. An instant later John was on his knees, legs spread, hips canted to give the alpha the best access. "Please," whimpered the omega.

The whole world was nothing more than the scent and sight and feel of the dripping omega in front of him. There was no thought, no cases, no boredom, no science, just this. And when his cock glided into the warmth and wet, the moment was more blissful than anything he'd ever felt. This was every drug high, every orgasm with John, every scientific experiment and paper and every good over-eight case he'd ever had, rolled into one.

And he hadn't even orgasmed yet.

Nothing mattered but the slick push-pull of Sherlock's cock and John's slick hole. They came together and parted again and again, faster and faster, and then a tingling started in Sherlock's erection, the knot swelling and blocking the smooth movement of his thrusts. He pushed harder and John pushed back and with a jerk it caught. He couldn't thrust anymore, and for a moment, both their hips jerked helplessly, trying to regain the familiar rhythm.

But then John's hips did a sort of counter-rotation and Sherlock's instincts caught up. It was so good, so very good and they were locked together now. Something primitive in Sherlock was howling triumphantly, because his omega couldn't ever get away if he was like this, but he needed to make sure it would stick, that he'd stay even after the knot went down.

Sherlock normally hated the instinctive savagery of bonding bites. He had always appreciated, even as he mocked the institution, the civilised marriage ceremony of two betas. Two people making a rational choice and a public legal contract in relation to their permanent relationship, that was the correct way to do things. But right then, knotted to his omega, he just knew that he had to. He _had to_. Without conscious direction his tongue was laving John's neck and his mate was tilting his head to the side, openly acquiescing, enticing, and he couldn't resist.

The alpha lunged forward and sank his teeth in, marking his mate. John tensed under him before his whole body bucked with the force of his orgasm, crying out while his internal muscles clamped down on Sherlock's cock, sending the alpha over the edge as well.

They collapsed to the bed, panting, trembling with aftershocks, still knotted together. "Oh, John," Sherlock groaned, finally speaking coherently again. The output of pheromones from John had eased, but no doubt it would rise again.

"Mmfgl," John replied unhelpfully. Then, "Best heat I've ever had," he added, sounding dazed and slurring his words a little. If he hadn't known otherwise, Sherlock might have assumed John was drunk or high.

There was nothing Sherlock could think of to say, nothing he wanted to say because he was still hard and buried inside John and it felt so good. Nothing mattered but how very good it felt and the way that John's pheromones and his own were shifting to greater sameness. John would smell like him and he would smell like John, and then everyone would know the omega was his. John was his omega and he was never letting John go. Ever.

Eventually the knot went down and they took the time out to drink something and eat something before the pheromonal surge narrowed the world back down to nothing more than skin and slick heat and pure need.

The second time was a surprise as John's patience for food and water gave out and he half tackled Sherlock to the bed, straddling his mate and riding him. For one moment an inner conflict surged in Sherlock, the alpha need for dominance warring with the way that Sherlock enjoyed some variety to keep things from being boring. It felt brilliant, which was slowly subsuming the alpha with the joy of knowing that his omega was demonstrating that he wouldn't leave far better than his alpha pinning him down could achieve.

Then John lunged forward and his teeth sank into Sherlock's neck, marking him as well. For a flash of a second something in Sherlock protested, tried to buck him off which only slammed his knot firmly into place locking them together, and then a sense of rightness took him. He possessed the omega, but equally the omega had him. It was right and good and Sherlock nuzzled at his mark on John's neck while letting John lave the bite on Sherlock's with his tongue.

It was Good.

As John's heat peaked the instinctive need to have pups had him turning around the moment his alpha slipped free and desperately stimulating him to full tumescence again. Every second Sherlock wasn't fucking him he felt so desperately empty, so needy.

And yet, it was so much better than any heat he'd ever had before. For the first time he was actually satisfied. For the first time, on that second day, there was a long, thick cock buried inside him and a long-fingered hand stroking up and down John's length. There was a pale, tall body draped over him and a deep voice murmuring filthy promises in his ears about pups and ownership.

Most of all, there was a bond bite on his neck which didn't sting or ache, but buzzed lightly sending bolts of arousal down to John's sex, making him wail, ecstatic, because he'd needed this for so long and he finally had it. There was his mark on Sherlock's neck, which made the instincts in John purr happily because it meant his alpha wouldn't and couldn't leave him, would stay and protect their den and provide for any pups.

He was built for this to happen in his heats, and having it happen was like the relief of a discomfort or pain you'd had so long you didn't even register it anymore. Like when your allergies finally stopped when summer was over or a nagging ankle injury finally healed. That sense of emptiness, of being incomplete and the thundering need, need, needneedneed _needneedneed_ that took up the days of heat were eased so very much by getting what you needed.

In fact, getting knotted and taken by an alpha actively shortened a heat because the pheromone and hormone soup put off by an omega was for the purpose of getting an alpha there and mating with the omega in question. Once it was happening the body could switch over to other concerns like fertility.

It was why John had doubled up on the birth control with not only a morning after pill for the moment his heat was over, but like most of the omegas in the network also an IUD. Because whatever the biochemical differences between omegas and beta women, the internal chemical changes caused in the course of pregnancy were the same, so the chemicals released by an IUD had the same effect. The morning after pill had had to be tweaked because you simply couldn't rely on remembering anything during a heat (the reason neither he nor Sherlock had bothered thinking about condoms) so it had to be effective after that last day of heat, but it was good to have that as a back-up, considering that omegas had a 99% likelihood of pregnancy from sex during oestrus.

And the fact that he could finally think these things again, could remember his morning after pill, told him his heat was over. Over a full day sooner than usual, two instead of the previous three, and he felt loose-limbed and relaxed and _fantastic_ despite the hunger and thirst from two days of minimal self-care while slaking his need for Sherlock's knot.

"That was . . . fascinating," Sherlock said.

John blinked at him in surprise. "I was worried you'd take it as poorly as Caroline said Mycroft took it," he admitted. "That you'd think you could beat it with your mind just to spite him."

Sherlock shook his head. "He was too shaken," he explained. "This was not a thing that merely took him by surprise, it clearly went deeper. I may not trust my brother on many issues and dislike with intensity his need to meddle, but there are specific lines he does not cross."

"Mycroft has lines?" John asked, "Will wonders never cease?"

A wry smile fluttered briefly over Sherlock's lips in response, then he said, "What is more intriguing is this." His fingers ran over the bonding mark on his neck. "I have never heard of any alpha being on the receiving end of a bonding bite, save for a few in pair bonds with other alphas."

John frowned, pulling Sherlock down so he could get a good look at it. "Interesting," he commented. "I mean, the healing factor and the scent change on it is identical to a typical alpha bite. I wonder . . ." he trailed off thoughtfully.

"What?" Sherlock asked, looking eagerly at him. It was a look John was becoming used to, and one of his favourites since Sherlock's return. It was the look of his alpha waiting to hear an idea that he thought was going to be interesting and clever. No backhanded compliments about being a conductor of light, just a genuine interest in John's intellectual capabilities.

"Culturally, we've been putting omegas on those suppressants for millennia," John said slowly as he worked through the thoughts. "Perhaps the bond bites would have been properly reciprocal in prehistory, but between the drugs and the way that most people knot from behind because it's easiest to lie down together afterwards, they stopped happening. I mean, there are so many side-effects of the suppressants that I still haven't fully determined because I was dealing with the most important one, but perhaps there are others." He looked up at Sherlock. "I think we'll have to monitor this. Maybe it's an aberration, maybe it's a reversion to something that properly evolved, and maybe it's just me, but I think we'll need to take some blood samples from both of us to get a look at the changes."

Sherlock's eyes lit up as they always did over interesting experiments and he kissed John very hard. "As transcendent as your oestrus was," he said, "I find myself so much more delighted with you now." Then he pouted. "And very disappointed in my transport for inconveniencing me this way."

Only Sherlock. "Well, since we're both too tired and sore, we can talk out the parameters. I want to talk to the other omegas in the network and see if we have anyone else this has happened with, broaden the sample size at least a little."

"We can speak to some alpha-alpha couples as well," Sherlock pointed out. "I wouldn't be shocked if there's a fair chemical equivalency to consider."

God, but John loved that he had a mate who could keep up with him when he talked science. While they ate and drank they lay curled up together on the bed to rest then talked over the chemical implications of an omega bonding and did desultory research on their phones into scholarly articles and anthropological papers in relation to alpha bonding.

When they got up the next morning Lestrade had sent them a half dozen texts about a new case and demanded to know where they were.


	12. Epilogue

Disclaimer: I rarely know who owns anything, but I know I don't own Sherlock in any of his incarnations.

Notes: The epilogue that I'm adding at the same time as the last chapter because really, this barely stands on its own.

* * *

 _. . . But our lead story is the shocking discovery by a research team at the Leeds School of Medicine. For literally centuries omegas have been seen as the equivalent of developmentally disabled, suffering from a genetically-based intellectual disability. The new research released by this team unequivocally proves that the heat and pheromone suppressants used with nearly every omega worldwide is the cause of this disability. Among the evidence mounting of this long-term tragedy is a suppressant pill that has been field-tested by a scientist who is currently only known as H.W., who we are informed has declared him or herself to be an omega. We go now to our correspondent in Birmingham for the details._

They were at a crime scene when the news broke, John turning up a radio as the half-heard news caught his attention. It brought all the action at the scene to a halt as the reporter went through the explanation of how the suppressants worked, what they did and the long-term damage caused by them, followed by several stories of omegas who had evaded the system.

Lestrade, for all that Sherlock liked to claim he was an idiot, wasn't one. He stepped close to John, asking, "Hamish Waters?"

"Depends," John said. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Depends," replied the DI. "What do you want me to do about it?"

A small smile drifted over John's face. "Right now, nothing. Maybe when it's accepted I'll tell people, but I don't want to be the face of it. Anyhow, I've got enough going on what with Sherlock's career."

"John! Come here and show Anderson why his analysis of the body is incompetent!"

With a long-suffering grin, John ambled over to the body, snapping on the latex gloves as he went. All this and his brilliant alpha too. Life had never been better.


End file.
